European aviation giant Airbus said it would file a criminal complaint following German media reports it had become the target of US industrial espionage.
Photograph: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images

The French-based aviation giant Airbus has challenged the German government over allegations that Berlin’s foreign intelligence agency engaged in industrial espionage against the company on behalf of the Americans.

The Airbus threat of legal action on Thursday came amid reports that Germany has been spying and eavesdropping on its closest partners in the European Union and passing the information to the Americans for more than a decade.

A closed parliamentary inquiry in Berlin has heard evidence of how the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, used its biggest eavesdropping complex in Bavaria to monitor communications at the Elysée Palace, the office of the French president, the French foreign ministry, and the European Commission in Brussels and then passed on the information to the Americans, according to German media reports. The disclosures triggered allegations of lying and cover-ups reaching to the very top of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration.

The snooping was also said to extend to big defence and aviation companies in Europe, including Airbus, but none of them were German or American under the terms of the alleged spy pact between the BND and the American National Security Agency (NSA) going back to 2002.

“There is a concrete suspicion of industrial espionage,” Airbus said in a statement. “We are alarmed … We have asked the German government for information.”

It added: “We will now file a criminal complaint against persons unknown on suspicion of industrial espionage.”

Amid persistent frictions between the US and German governments because of the Edward Snowden revelations two years ago of US and British surveillance activities in Europe, the fresh disclosures are embarrassing for Berlin which stands accused of hypocrisy in its protests about America spying on its allies.

“Spying on friends is not on at all,” Merkel responded when it became known her mobile was being monitored by the NSA. Since then, both sides have been embroiled in arguments about data privacy, with much talk among officials and diplomats of a collapse of German trust in the Americans.

But under a 2002 pact between the BND and the NSA, Berlin used its largest electronic eavesdropping facility at Bad Aibling in Bavaria to monitor email and telephone traffic at the Elysée Palace and of key EU institutions in Brussels including the European Commission, according to the reports.

Thomas de Maizière, the interior minister and a Merkel confidant, is in the firing line for allegedly lying about or covering up the German collaboration with the Americans. The minister has denied the allegations robustly and promised to answer before the parliamentary inquiry “the sooner, the better”.

The best-selling tabloid Bild-Zeitung depicted de Maizière as Pinocchio this week and accused him of “lying with impunity.” From 2005-9, he served as Merkel’s chief of staff, the post in Berlin that exercises authority over the BND. He is said to have been told of the spying activities in 2008.

The German media are asserting that if de Maizière knew what was going on, he has covered it up, and that if he did not know, he was failing in his job while the BND ranged out of political control.

According to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the public broadcasters WDR and NDR, citing information from the closed parliamentary inquiry, the BND’s biggest listening post at Bad Aibling in Bavaria “was abused for years for NSA spying on European states”.

“The core is the political spying of our European neighbours and EU institutions,” an unnamed source said to be familiar with the evidence told the Süddeutsche.

The Bad Aibling complex of listening posts was an NSA facility for years. Under an agreement in 2002 it was handed over to the Germans in 2004 since when much of the information gleaned was routinely passed to the Americans.

The Americans supplied search terms on a weekly basis to the Germans, according to the Munich newspaper – 690,000 phone numbers and 7.8m IP addresses up until 2013.